White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakovs semi-autobiographical first novel, revolves around a Ukrainian family in their home city of Kiev in 1918. Alexei, Elena, and Nikolka Turbin, adult siblings who have just lost their mother, find themselves plunged into the chaotic civil war that erupted in the wake of World War I and the Russian Revolution. In the context of this familys saga, Bulgakov recreates not only the moment-to-moment experience of battles, but also the long pauses that come before and after. He confronts the reader with the cruelty and violence that overtakes people and events, yet holds up for contrast individual acts of heroism and humanity. In this volume Marian Schwartz, a leading Russian translator, offers the first complete and accurate translation of the definitive original text of Bulgakovs novel. She includes the famous dream sequence, omitted in previous translations, and addresses the stylistic issues raised by Bulgakovs ornamental prose. Readers with an interest in Russian literature, culture, or history will welcome this superb translation of Bulgakovs important early work.

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I am one of those people who believe that the greatest novels have already been written. I also believe that they were written by Russians. Following on from the towering edifices of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky et al in the nineteenth century Mikhail Bulgakov (along with Mikhail Sholokov) was a worthy successor. This, his first work (originally recast into a play), tells the story of how the tumult of WWI/Revolution/Civil War impacted upon the unfortunate citizens of Kiev (then within the Russian Empire) as the city dissolves into a morass of confusion, turmoil and fear. White Guard royalists, Bolsheviks, Ukrainian nationalists, Cossacks, the rump German army, Poles, and even Senegalese troops, fight it out with nobody having the least notion of what is happening or even why. Commands and counter-commands, retreats, advances, rumours, counter-rumours, flight, corpses, chaos...Whereas Tolstoy had sought to unravel the meaning and causes of war and Andreyev to describe graphically the horror, Bulgakov depicts the imbecility, the sheer monumental stupidity of it all, and its messy aftermath. He does this with a rare sensitivity through the experiences of the young Turbin family, a family of Tsarist patriots who live in an apartment in central Kiev. Following the death of their mother, twenty-eight year old Alex, a doctor, is left as the eldest, with his married (and abandoned) sister Elena, teenage brother Nikolai and their maid Anyuta.Read more ›

This edition was translated by Michael Glenny, a seasoned and reliable translator of Russian novels and more. Mikhail Bulgakov's work came late to publication in English (from 1967) and is still not as well known as it should be. The Master And Margarita (Penguin Classics), begun in 1928 and completed sometime before his death in 1940, but not officially published until 1966, is his greatest work, but White Guard (1926) also merits attention as a novel, as a semi-autobiographical work, and as a document of the Civil War waged over Kiev, Ukraine and Russia following the October 1917 revolution.

Bulgakov asserted that Kiev changed hands 14 times during 1918-19 and that he personally witnessed 10 of those changes. This novel presents just a snapshot; the departure of the German Imperial Army and its puppet, the Hetman of Ukraine; their replacement by the opportunist peasant leader Petlyura; and his departure 47 days later as the Bolshevik Red Army advanced on the city. In the background are the Ukrainian nationalist movement that briefly held Ukraine as an independent sovereign state, and the White Guard, supporting Imperial Russia and reinstatement of the Tsar. Bulgakov's alter ego, Alexie Turbin, and his brother Nikolai are White Guard officers who, along with a number of friends also featured in the novel (and indeed much of the population of Kiev), are placed in danger of their lives as Petlyura takes over the city.Read more ›

Other than War and Peace, I can think of no better evocation of the random horror of war; like Tolstoy, Bulgakov doesn't allow us to draw easy conclusions in this, his first novel. The disjointed tapestry of a narrative is by turns anecdotal, fantastical (Satan swinging in the belfry is a wonderful image) and epic-heroic - and then just when you've settled in a comfortable reading pattern (as far as this is ever possible with Bulgakov) some terrible act of violence will shock you. It's not quite the finished article (see M&M), but the mixture of experimentation and classical realism is an engaging blend, making for a great read.I would heartily recommend this to any fan of modern fiction, and anyone who's wondering where to go after Master and Margarita.

`The White Guard' follows the story of a few days in the lives of a Ukranian family (the Turbins) living in Kiev during the final days of Russia's participation in WWI and with the revolution impending. The city is braced for the attack of the communists, led by the infamous and demonic figure of Petlyuria , putting its faith in the German army and Ukranian Hetman Skoropodsky for protection. As the townsfolk organise themselves into resistance movements, it soon becomes clear that Skoropodsky and the Germans have decided to abandon the people of Kiev to their fate. The Turbins, along with many others, rush to the defence of Kiev, only to find that their resistance has crumbled into an embarrassing mess as the war is lost before a shot is fired in anger. The book focuses on the actions of the people of Kiev, and the Turbins in particular, as they resign themselves to losing the war.

This book was less fantastic than `The Master and Marguerita', though some wonderful demonic imagery creeps in every now and then. Its strength lies in the contrast it draws between the glorious ideals of war and its rather banal reality. When Petlyuria's men take Kiev the people pour onto the streets in celebration, despite the fact that they despise him, and despite the fact that many of the celebrating people have no idea who has won. In the midst of this surreality, a brutal execution takes place, a reminder of the horrors going on around them. The resistance is presented as being a righteous cause, but right is ultimately not enough as might prevails. The final scenes, in which the Turbins abandon their dreams of fighting for a free Ukraine and begin to resign themselves to life under the Soviets are heartbreaking, both for their sense of failure and their sense of futility.Read more ›